1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to aircraft instrumentation displays and more particularly to the enhancement in the display of an avionics flight display with enhanced temporal depiction of navigation information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Some Flight Management Systems (FMS) for aircraft provide a Required Time of Arrival (RTA) function, which can be associated with one or more waypoints. This type of function is necessary to enable 4-D navigation, which requires the airplane to pass over a given waypoint at a certain time. With today's navigation systems, a tolerance of 30 seconds is typically allowed at the RTA waypoint.
Today, the pilot sets up the RTA for a waypoint by selecting an FMS Control Display Unit (CDU) page, as shown in the example below. FIG. 1 (Prior Art) shows a page that currently exists on the Smith's FMS (Boeing 737). When the RTA waypoint has been input, the FMS calculates a time window, which shows the earliest and latest times that the airplane could arrive at that waypoint based on airplane performance and atmospheric conditions. Currently, there is no method for graphically displaying a type of “Time Window” on the typical navigation map. This is because both times reference the same spatial location. All that can be provided is a text display of the earliest and latest arrival times.
Furthermore, with the inevitable increase in reliance on 4-D navigation in the future, there appears to be a need to increase the pilot's Situation Awareness of the airplane's constraints within the time domain.